Ex-ICE agent charged over shooting is freed by Texas authorities

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer charged with shooting a Venezuelan man and allegedly lying about it during an immigration raid in Minneapolis was released from a Texas jail a day after a federal judge refused to order his return to the US state of Minnesota.

The former ICE agent, Christian Castro, had been detained in a county jail in Texas since May, charged in connection with the nonfatal shooting of 24-year-old Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis and hitting him in the leg when firing through the front door of his home during an immigration crackdown in Minnesota on January 14.

The immigration sweep was part of a mass deportation effort under United States President Donald Trump. Prosecutors said Castro wrongfully accused Sosa-Celis and another man of assaulting an ICE officer with a broom handle and a snow shovel.

Castro was freed on Thursday morning from the Carrizales-Rucker Cameron County Detention Center near Brownsville, Texas, a city on the US border with Mexico. A Minnesota judge had issued a nationwide warrant for his arrest in May. Minnesota officials and the state’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension eventually detained him in Texas on May 29. Minnesota authorities then sought his extradition.

Under Texas law, the state cannot hold the subject of an extradition order for more than 90 days. At that point, the suspect must either be transferred or released. The deadline for Castro expired on Thursday.

Upon exiting the detention centre, Castro motioned towards a few camera operators and a reporter crowding around him and quickly got into an SUV that drove off.

In a ruling on Wednesday, District Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr wrote that he could not intervene or prevent a county sheriff from releasing Castro given that Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican and close political ally of Trump, had refused to sign the extradition warrant for political reasons. Abbott argued that he is waiting for the outcome of an internal state investigation considering whether Castro was legally a “fugitive” under the Extradition Clause, lawyers for the state of Texas said.

The governor also said last week that he would not respond to the extradition request, citing ongoing investigations into alleged fraud in Minnesota’s social service programmes, which Trump used to justify his immigration crackdown there.